07/07/2023
The Apple Or The Pear
We hunger in earnest for that which we cannot consume.
I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods. The very good people did not convince me; I felt they'd never been tempted. But you knew; you understood; you felt the world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands and you hated the things it asked of one; you hated happiness bought by disloyalty and cruelty and indifference. That was what I'd never known before and it's better than anything I've known. Rise above the deceptions and temptations of the mind. This is your duty. You are born for this only; all other duties are self-created and self-imposed owing to ignorance. Temptation likes best those who think they have a natural immunity, for it may laugh all the harder when they succumb. History fancies itself linear but yields to a cyclical temptation.
Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." My dark side says, I am no good. I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence. You will not experience dramatic change in your struggle as long as you use accountability to describe your sins instead of declaring your need for help in the midst of temptation. I have given in to temptations to lust that pulsed like hot, itching sores in my mind. And so I cling to this image.
Why is it that any time we speak of temptation we always speak of temptation as something that inclines us to wrong. We have more temptations to become good than we do to become bad. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigors If at my convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? There are two influences ever present in the world. One is constructive and elevating and comes from our Heavenly Father; the other is destructive and debasing and comes from Lucifer. We have our agency and make our own choice in life subject to these unseen powers. There is a division line well defined that separates the Lord's territory from Lucifer's. If we live on the Lord's side of the line Lucifer cannot come there to influence us, but if we cross the line into his territory we are in his power. By keeping the commandments of the Lord we are safe on His side of the line, but if we disobey His teachings we voluntarily cross into the zone of temptation and invite the destruction that is ever present there.
There are many roads in this world that will guide you to pleasurable, fun, and exciting destinations that do not end in any form of lasting happiness. So before you step on an enticing path, figure out where it leads. I endeavored to renounce society, that I might avoid temptation. But it was a poor religion; so far as it prevailed, only tended to make me gloomy, stupid, unsociable, and useless. There is no arguing with the pretenders to a divine knowledge and to a divine mission. They are possessed with the sin of pride. They have yielded to the perennial temptation. As I lay in bed trying to figure out the tangle I had gotten myself into, I realized temptation struck human beings in different forms. In the form of chocolates for children, drugs for young adults, bribe money for people in influential positions, and sometimes in the form of lust –like the kind I had been struck with. Human beings succumbed to this temptation despite knowing too well that they would suffer the consequences days, weeks, months or even years later. Remove yourself from temptation. Don't even look at something if you know you shouldn't have it. We've learned to hold ourselves accountable in the end, but we still fail to ask for help in the middle.
I once faced a temptation that was so persistent and so overwhelming that I literally believed my whole world would go dark if I refused to give in to it. The spiral begins this way: a temptation or thought that's not from above comes into your mind. Stop right there. Identify that reality. If a harmful thought enters your mind. We must be awakened to this. Those thoughts are from the Enemy, who often uses our own desires against us. The Enemy works in your life by luring and lying. He promises things he can't fulfill. He challenges truth. He attacks character and intentions. As soon as you eat the fruit and hit guilt, shame, frustration, the Enemy changes roles. He shifts from being the enticer and promiser to becoming the accuser and the condemner. If you're feeling lousy and you sin in an attempt to feel better, whatever pain you're feeling right now will still be there tomorrow morning, only worse. In every trial or temptation, there is a hidden lesson we ought to learn; such lesson is there to propel us for our future journey.
No such thing as a temptation. A temptation is a desire, a lust like any other but one that we regret afterwards plus wish undone (or that we know beforehand we will regret after. So it`s no excuse to say, ``I didn`t mean to do it. I was tempted plus I couldn`t resist.`` All one can honestly say is, I did it. I`m not sorry I did it. I blame what happened next on the door. The one right across the hall from me, a mere three feet away. I love doors. All of them, without exception. Doors lead to things and I’ve never met one I haven’t wanted to open. All the same, if that door hadn’t been so old and decorative, so decidedly closed, if a thread of light hadn’t positioned itself with such wretched temptation across its middle, highlighting the keyhole and its intriguing key, perhaps I might have stood a chance; remained twiddling my thumbs until Percy came to collect me. But it was and I didn’t; I maintain that I simply couldn’t. Sometimes, you can tell just by looking at a door there’s something interesting behind it. Temptation can sway even the purest mind to sin, and the denialist to claim that tomorrow will bring change. However, the irrefutable truth is tomorrow, my friend, never comes. Temptation is the devil looking through the keyhole. Yielding is opening the door and inviting him in.
Tomorrow's character is made out of today's thoughts. Temptation may come suddenly, but sin doesn't.
